The Frontier Alchemist ~ I Can't Go Back to That Job After You Made My Budget Zero

A splash.

A shadow is moving in the pitch-dark sewers.

The shadow pounces on a rat that has jumped out from a side street.

A splat!

At first glance, it looks like slime. The rat is taken into its body. For a moment, the rat struggles. But the mucus that enters through its mouth seals its airway and quickly kills it.

"Rats. It's getting fewer and fewer, huh?"

He mutters something like this when he thinks that a human figure has grown out of the part of the body that had appeared to be only mucus.

The face on the human figure still had strong traces of Riharzam.

Perhaps he had gotten used to using his tongue made of mushrooms, and his voice had changed to be easier to understand than before.

"All the mole-modkis we sent to Rust's bastard have been wiped out. Now, now, now."

The flesh of the rat taken into Rehalzam's body rapidly dissolves.

In no time at all, the rats are reduced to nothing but bones, and even those bones are dissolving away.

After finishing his meal, Riharzam heads for the underground hall where he sleeps.

This was the sewers that extended beneath the city. Riharzamu, who was hunted down from the earth as a demon tribe, has been hiding in these underground sewers. Sometimes he ate insects and rats as he had just done, and sometimes he released mycelium from his body to create his own body, which he used as a parasite for the creatures around him.

The creatures that were parasitized with mushrooms, which were their alter egos, became the handmaidens of Rehalzam, and even shared some of their senses with particularly compatible individuals.

Riharzam, who realized that he could absorb and combine other creatures into his pawns, actively tried to make the mushrooms parasitize other creatures.

The other day, he sent an army of these "mole-mushrooms" to Rust. The result was a stunning defeat.

It was a fruitless action, but this obsession with Rust was the only way for Rehalzam to maintain the ego he had when he was a human.

"Moles and rats are not enough. There are more powerful, more effective ones out there."

Riharzam returned to his nest, mumbling and muttering intermittently.

The walls were covered with mycelium, and a mole-like creature with mushrooms growing out of its head was flapping around for its master, Riharzam.

One of the mole-modokki heads to Riharzam, whose human-shaped part is shaking, to report to him.

What, now, hurry, hurry! A trespasser, you say? All right, show us the way."

Riharzamu spreads his slime mold part wide and jumps on the mole. It then engulfs the Molemodoki with its memory.

The captive mole was an individual that had absorbed an insect. Riharzam relives the images captured by the insect's compound eyes.

In the compound eye's vision, three figures appear in the sewers. Judging from their equipment, they were adventurers who had come to investigate.

Moreover, they were Deden, a familiar face to Rehalzam, and his companions.

"Deden, huh? It's been a long time... hasn't it? Did you escape without me? We'll have to give you a warm welcome. Ha-ha-ha-ha!

After a short burst of laughter, Riharzam transformed into a slime mold form and crawled on the ground.